Preserves

After my positive experience last autumn making apple preserves and applesauce I'm excited to try out more home preserving this year. I'm really happy that CK is just as excited as I am.

Which is good since our fridge still had over 7 pounds of strawberries in it from the U-pick on Sunday. This evening she made ginger cookies from Vegan with a Vengeance and I washed & stemmed the berries. I was inspired today by an article I saw in the NY Times on preserves which linked me to some good sites.

So the 7+ pounds of berries are now in our freezer. I won't have time to experiment with doing low or no-sugar jam. The berries are so sweet that to add all the sugar called for in my Ball Blue Book of Preserving seems ridiculous. This way they can stay fresh until this weekend when I'll try my hand at some "small batch preserving".

My back aches from standing there cleaning the berries, but I'm excited to try this out. I really have been enjoying learning how to do more of these types of things at home. It feels good that our evenings are spent on making the house and yard better, cooking together, and growing together.